Valerie Baber Designs

Inspired by your heritage is something that can be exhilarating to do and of great importance in ones life.  Who you are is greatly influenced by your family’s history and background on various levels.  I recently spent a fantastic afternoon at the Local Heritage Festival.  I highly suggest you take a visit to your local festival of similar type.  The air was filled with wonderful aroma’s of all kinds of delicious foods.  One of the tents we just had to stop by was the Ukrainian and Romanian venues.  My family just had to  have their fill of pyrogies!  And were very satisfied with their choice.

I was pleasantly surprise how much I was inspired by this day at the festival.  It was a wealth of beautiful items and traditions to excite my artistic goals.  Everywhere you looked there was something else to dance in your mind of all the things you could make with that inspiration.  This first picture is of the Romanian tent with hand painted eggs and other wonderful items.  I especially loved the vest in black and white.  Just stunning.

These incredible Ukrainian Hand Painted Eggs were so beautiful and detailed.  Just look at the amazing colours and designs on each one.  This inspires me to do some intarsia and fairisle knitting, something I haven’t done in years.  These two techniques used to be such a big part of my designs.  Perhaps I need to knit a Ukrainian Easter Egg!  Hmmmm.

You could spend a whole day at the Heritage Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and constantly be inspired.  All the different foods and artifacts to view and enjoy makes it one of my new favourite things to do in the summer.  Edmonton happens to be call the Festival City as it has so many different festivals each year.

One of the things I loved the most was all the different fiber related history and items I found. Below is a collection of stunning works and such that I enjoyed looking at.  You realize that fiber arts have been around forever and to be a part of it in the present is a true honour.  The history of fiber arts is amazing as a necessity as well as an art form.  Take some time to look into the past for inspiration and make something new from it for the future!

There were so many Countries to visit and many pictures later I felt like I had taken a trip around the world in one afternoon.  It was amazing!